Episode 65: Digital Design with Fundraising in Mind

It’s easy to see building websites and designing forms as an onerous cost for an organization, especially when there are any number of social media channels that are free to use. But it’s important to ask if those free options are serving the purpose that your organization needs them to serve, and to remember that forms and websites built specifically to help your donors find and support your organization may have a cost, but they also have a value. 

Today’s episode was recorded at the Ask Direct Fundraising Summer School, held in Dublin, Ireland. Tune in to hear an interview with Beate Sørum, an international public speaker and a fundraising consultant based in Norway who brings some unique perspectives on form design and UX optimization. Listen to the interview to hear what Beate has to say about why forms are a good investment, how to engage with your donors through follow-up questions, and how social media is affecting fundraising efforts now. 

Topics Discussed in This Episode: 

• Some of the areas Beate has done testing into and insights that she’s found along the way
• How Norway has sidestepped the issue of copying what others are doing because of their lack of off-the-shelf solutions
• Why Beate sees forms as an investment rather than a cost
• How follow-up questions can be a good way to continue engaging with your donors
• Untraditional ways of designing forms
• How to better understand why people give and where giving comes from
• Why forms end up offering too much choice
• How social media is playing into fundraising right now
• How to develop content in a way that’s most likely to achieve the goals of the organization
• How to determine what’s working on social media when you have so many measurements to choose from
• How organizations can get started with more effective testing and use of digital channels 

Resources: 

The Ask Direct Fundraising Summer School 2018

Beate Sørum

About Beate Sørum

 

“My task is kind of to get people to stop looking at websites and forms as a cost and start seeing it as an investment.”

 

“Not everyone is going to fill out all your follow-up questions, but that’s OK. You’d rather actually have them as a donor than know everything about them.”

 

“A form is just a piece of code. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to put it within the emotional story that you’re telling.”